YVN FEELS IT IMMEDIATLY.
Something is wrong. The air is too still—the kind of silence that puts you on guard. No movement. No hum of surveilnce. Since the st alert, even the military drones have vanished.
She sprints down the fire escape, four steps at a time, every nerve tuned to danger. Someone made me. There is no other expnation.
She needs to disappear—fast. But the question gnaws at her, slipping in alongside instinct: Why did they send me here? Why this pce?
She veers left sharply, avoiding the windows—too easy a target.
Beep. Beep.
An image flickers in her mind. A vehicle docking against the tower-city, Level 134—twenty-seven floors up. Shadows spill out, melting into the dark framework. Two figures.
The hunt has begun.
Yet her system detected nothing else. No combat drones. No support bots. No spy bugs. Who the hell works without cover like this? And why?
Mental message received.
Asset must be protected at all costs. I repeat: at all costs.
She would—if she could find it. So far, nothing. No trace. The pce is empty. Unless…
Beep. Beep.
New image. Two light vehicles approaching from the west side of New Esperanza Tower 4B. Distance: 4.37 km. Location: Level minus 65. Not DarkNet. These ones are hiding.
New message received.
Presence of asset detected. Proceed with caution.
Her fingers hover over the trigger. Should she take out the hostiles on Level 134 now? A wide-orbit satellite already has the zone locked—long-range weapons primed. Half-petawatt pulse sers. Hypersonic fusion missiles. Surgical precision, maximum impact.
No. Too rash. Too messy. She is armed, trained, and fast enough to do this alone. Besides—who are the real enemies?
More importantly—where is the asset?
Proceed with caution.
Beep. New image.
The two from above are moving. Fast. Dropping level by level, window to window, leaping like grasshoppers. Intelligent assault exoskeletons. Stabilizers. Pros. Dark Swords, most likely.
No point in hiding now.
She moves.
Only one way to stay ahead—beat them to the target.
Level minus 65. New Esperanza Tower 4B. That’s where this would go down.
Meanwhile…
“Shit, we’ve been made!” Akrom shouts.
Every sensor spiked—movement converging from the east.
Akrom’s gut twists. That bitch is leading them straight to us!
“They can’t see us,” Jasper says. “This shelter is airtight.”
“Yeah?” Julia snaps. “Then how the hell did they know where to look?”
Akrom turns on him, rage boiling over. “This is your fault!”
Jasper’s fist shut him up. One clean right hook. Akrom reels, catches himself, and lunges.
Jasper levels a gun in his face.
“Calm the fuck down, kid.” His voice is steel. “Gear up. Helmets. Scooters. We’re bsting out.”
“Too te!”
Julia is already counting down.
Two minutes to contact. One minute fifteen. Fifty-five seconds.
Jasper thinks fast. “We negotiate. They’re after something. They think we have it. If they kill us, they risk losing it. That gives us leverage. Thoughts?”
“Ten seconds!”
“Shut up,” Akrom snarls—then bolts.
“I’m out!”
Jasper catches him mid-step, sweeping his leg out from under him.
At that exact second—
Boom.
The armored shelter door explodes, split clean in two by a steel-blue energy bolt.
Julia and Jasper throw up their hands in surrender.
A figure steps through the smoke.
A woman. Shadowed, but her exoskeleton twists the air around her, warping her outline into something monstrous. Weapons up. Headmp fring.
Jasper doesn’t waste breath on lies. “We haven’t done anything. We can expin.”
She doesn’t listen. Doesn’t move.
But he catches a glimpse of her face. She is calcuting. Fast. Running her own countdown. And Jasper understands—the two coming up behind her aren’t allies.
She makes her call. Shoves them aside then jumps onto the fastest scooter in the room—his.
She isn’t here to fight.
She is forcing her way out.
Four. Three. Two—
“Get down!”
The entire dome of the shelter disintegrates in an instant, obliterated by the force of the bsts. Through the swirling smoke, the scooter rockets upward, trailing streaks of electric blue. The woman fires all four guns at once—left shoulder, right shoulder, left hand, right hand. To the east, the impacts roar like earthquakes. Return fire shatters the air. Bom. Bom.
Jasper and his friends are buried alive beneath the avanche of debris. Bom. Bom. Fshes of lightning, shouted curses. Through the choking wall of dust and smoke, they catch a glimpse of the scooter tearing south, already pursued by a military vehicle, its lights cutting through the chaos.
“Don’t move, or we’re all dead,” Jasper murmurs, pinned beneath a half-colpsed metal beam. “Py dead, or stay dead for real.”
The seconds stretch into an eternity. Finally, when the silence settles and the choking haze begins to clear, he struggles to his feet.
“Let’s move. I’ve got a bad feeling they’ll be back any second.”
Akrom scrambles onto his scooter while Jasper swings onto the back of Julia’s. Within moments, the two machines plunge downward, weaving at breakneck speed through the lower levels of Esperanza, where the shadows run deeper and detection is harder. They carve through the towering structures like phantoms, vanishing into the byrinth below.
